AI-generated The blood sausage of the Croatian pig slaughter. In Slavonia it holds no grain at all: cooked pig head, skin, lungs, heart, spleen and tongue, red onion fried in lard, and the blood, seasoned with salt, hot paprika and black pepper. Further north the recipe changes. Zagorje adds rice, Prigorje barley, and Međimurje fills its čurke with buckwheat or millet. In Slavonia the sausages come out of the pot at the kolinje evening meal, and later they are baked whole in lard and eaten with sauerkraut and fried potatoes. Some go into the smokehouse with the other sausages and end up sliced cold on a platter.
History
At the kolinje, the blood is caught while still warm and stirred so it does not clot. The men chop the cooked meat za divenice, for the blood sausages, as a text from the Požega city museum describes the Slavonian slaughter. Once filled, the sausages are poached, and after the work everyone eats them fresh from the pot. The name divenica turns up across Slavonia, Zagorje and Posavina. Grain fillings belong to the north: according to the food writer Božica Brkan, most of Croatia moved to rice, while Međimurje kept buckwheat, millet and corn.
Ingredients
Preparation
The head and offal cook until the meat falls off the bone. The meat then gets ground coarse, at 10-12 mm, or chopped by hand, while skin, onion and lard go through a fine 6 mm plate. Everything is mixed with the blood and the spices and filled into pork casing tied into rings. The sausages poach at 80-90 °C for 30-40 minutes. The water must not boil, or the casings burst. For a later meal they go into the oven whole, brushed with lard.
Taste
Dark and savoury from the blood, with sweetness from the fried onion and some heat from the paprika. Without grain the meat comes through clearly.
Texture
Soft and coarse inside, with pieces of head meat. A baked krvavica has a crisp casing. The smoked ones turn firm enough to slice.
Rituals & Traditions
Fresh from the pot
At the end of a kolinje day, the freshly poached krvavice go on the table for everyone who helped.
Keep the water below the boil
Poach at 80-90 °C. Boiling water bursts the casing, and the filling ends up in the pot.
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Where to Eat
Darócz
Vardarac, Croatia
A village restaurant in Vardarac, in the municipality of Bilje, under a long tiled roof with a porch full of geraniums. The menu has a cold platter for two called Plata iz djedine pušnice, from grandpa's smokehouse: kulen, kobasica, bacon, švargla, krvavica and cracklings. The krvavica on it is the smoked kind, sliced cold.
Kod Varge
Bilje, Croatia
A family restaurant in Bilje, a few kilometres north of Osijek, now in its third generation. The house calls itself the oldest restaurant in Baranja and says it has cooked here for 50 years. The menu lists homemade kulen, ham, kobasica, cracklings and krvavica, and most of the produce comes from the family estate. Hot dishes include fish paprikaš with homemade pasta, čobanac and grilled meat. The kulen is the house's own domaći kulen, not the certified Baranjski kulen.